Re:Good technology, bad researcher (Score 3, Informative)

My wording in the earlier post was a bit strong, I suppose. I compared a mature technology and approach to fusion to one that hasn't really been verified. There just hasn't been much stock put into the plasma focus approach in some time. US and international attention has been focused on magnetic confinement and laser or x-ray inertial confinement. It's been about four years since I've looked at the dense plasma focus as a fusion device, but as I recall the problem is that it takes a beam-cold target approach. It is difficult to reach the temperatures necessary to achieve a significant fusion burn in this way. The plasma cannot be considered thermonuclear, as the neutron distribution is not isotropic - this was one of the bones we had with Mr. Lerner's conclusions, as I recall. There are still a lot of questions about confinement as well. The plasma constrained by its own magnetic fields, so it fits in this sort of odd category between inertial and magnetic confinement. In terms of pulsed fusion, to me the Z-pinch method holds a bit more promise, as we understand a great deal more about how x-rays contribute to confinement and burn. This isn't to say the plasma focus can't achieve fusion - because it certainly is capable of that, and it can be done cheaply, it's just that the work to show that it can scale up has never been completed.